The AI Breakdown First Five - Thursday August 31, 2023

5. Gannett Backs Off AI Content Generation

These days it seems like there are more stories about publications pausing AI-generated content efforts than starting them. Newspaper chain Gannett has discontinued an effort after publishing an error laden piece. I dunno, call us crazy but maybe publishers forgetting that they need editors is the bigger problem than AI?

4. AI Beats Humans in Drone Racing

Stop trying to make fetch drone racing happen. After years of the Drone Racing League being the ‘next big thing’ without it ever actually happening, AI has now proven itself better at drone racing than humans. Bad news for drone racing; good news for the US military?

3. A121 Becomes Latest AI Startup Unicorn

Hype downturn be damned, a new AI unicorn has been minted. Tel Aviv-based AI21 has raised $155m at a $1.4B valuation. Unlike some of the “OpenAI API wrapper” startups that have struggled more recently, A121 has its own proprietary technology.

2. China Allows Baidu & Other AI Models to Go Live

The CCP has tightly controlled (and limited) the release of generative AI models, but this week allowed five companies including Baidu to release their chatbots to the public. Alibaba appears not to be among them.

1. US Restricts AI Chip Exports to Middle East

Nvidia reports that in addition to existing restrictions on chip exports to China and Russia, last quarter the US government told them to stop exporting to a set of unnamed countries in the Middle East. It appears that the move is still ultimately about denying China access, versus prohibiting access for Mid East countries.

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Signing off from the future’s past - NLW